Thursday's Frosty Mug: A New Brewer and the MVP Race

Some things to read

Yesterday's big news came as the Brewers signed catcher Blake Lalli to a minor league deal. Lalli also received an invite to spring training. Lalli is 29 years old and reached the majors for the first time in 2012, playing six games for the Cubs. Lalli spent his entire six-year career with the Cubs organization before splitting 2012 between Chicago and Oakland. Jaymes Langrehr says that Lalli is a camp body. With catcher Humberto Quintero electing free agency a couple weeks ago, the Brewers needed some more minor league depth.

Mike Vassallo has a run down of non-roster invitees to spring training following the signing of Lalli.

The other big news in the Brewers world comes tonight as the Baseball Writers Association of America will announce the 2012 MVP awards tonight at 5:00 CT. Braun is a finalist along with Buster Posey, Andrew McCutchen, Yadier Molina, and Chase Headley. Yesterday, Tom Haudricourt took a brief look at Braun's credentials and the competition he is facing.

At the official site, Mike Bauman also examines Braun's candidacy, saying "Braun obviously should be regarded as not only a legitimate NL MVP Award candidate, but an untainted candidate as well."

Meanwhile, SB Nation announced the winners of their voting for Players of the Year. Ryan Braun lost to Buster Posey by over 100 voting points in the National League while Mike Trout topped Miguel Cabrera in the American League.

The Cy Young awards were handed out yesterday with former Brewer R.A. Dickey winning the National League award. David Price upset Justin Verlander to take home the AL Cy Young. No current Brewers received a vote. Dickey became the first knuckleballer to win a Cy Young

The Brewers will be holding their annual medical symposium from Friday-Sunday this week. The three-day event will cover a number of topics, including how pitch f/x and field f/x can help predict injuries, pitching workloads, biomechanical analysis, and a lot more. According to team medical director Roger Caplinger, the Brewers have had the second-fewest disabled-list days in the MLB over the past 10 seasons.

Brewers minor leaguers stayed hot in the fall and winter leagues yesterday. Josh Prince went 2-5 with two RBI, a run, and a stolen base in the AFL while Jean Segura picked up a couple hits and scored a run in the Dominican Winter League to bring his batting average up to .341. You can read about them and more in Morineko's daily recap.

Around the MLB:

Marlins: Claimed pitcher Scott Maine off of waivers from the Blue Jays.
Giants: Signed pitcher Jeremy Affeldt to a three year, $18 million deal.
Cardinals: Brian FUentes has decided to retire.

The big Marlins-Blue Jays trade continues to make waves. Ricky Nolasco, who accounts for basically the entire Florida player payroll, was asked for his thoughts on the trade. He declined, saying "I'm next, anyways".The Marlins are also rumored to be shopping Logan Morrison, but are unwilling to trade star Giancarlo Stanton.

Marlins President David Sampson went on the Dan LeBatard show to defend the trade. Fish Bytes has a transcript.

Before the Blue Jays swept in, the Red Sox were in talks to acquire Josh Johnson and Jose Reyes from the Marlins, but the price was apparently too high.

As it stands, the Marlins payroll for 2013 stands at about $16 million. SB Nation's Bill Hanstock has a list of individual athletes who stand to earn more than the entire Marlins team in 2013.

At least the trade gave us this: Wendy Thurm at Fangraphs used the deal as a base to jump into a phenomenal piece explaining the MLB's revenue sharing system. If you read one link from this, that should be the one.

That's all I've got, unless you think your name spelled backwards spells a clear message, too.